sunbeams & shadows of trees
by oh sweet lily beans
Summary: It's summer, after all, and it doesn't last forever. -- Finny/Gene. Rated for sexual content and language.


**Author's Note:** There are particular things in this that I've made notes of; they're in the form of (#) in the fic and for an explanation, you can find the same (#) notation at the bottom of the page :)

**I. of the sun and its heavenly beams **

He always called that summer - the summer of 1942, that is - a _gypsy summer_, and it was full of bright gypsy summer days. After blitzball one day, Finny hops the stairs two-at-a-time, limbs spreading out like a fan. When he gets to the dormitory, he opens the window and turns the radio low, humming along off-key. The late afternoon sun is spilling onto the floor between the beds and atoms, molecules, particles of sunlight, it seems, dance in the space between that faraway star and the floor of adolescence. Finny can see Gene across them, and it's so ridiculous how he thinks when he sees him, green-blue eyes shimmering as they struggle to look away from the setting sun, he thinks, so swiftly, that Gene seems quite _angelic_.

**phineas;** - but it's only a thought, right? Well, he's only a friend. I don't _love him_ or anything. It's perfectly fine to think your friend heavenly, and whatnot. Nothing odd about it.

(He also tells himself, whenever he catches Gene's gaze, that if he himself blushes - well, of course _that_ doesn't mean anything either, right?)

Phineas looks down and pulls his shirt over his head, letting it fall wherever his hand happens to land. He just doesn't see, as he struggles to hide his discomfort, how Gene looks at him as he does so, how he stares at his friend's abdomen and the muscles underneath. Gene turns and slips his own shirt over his head, dropping it on his bed with something like resignation.

Phineas is just thinking to himself again, _nothing in it, nothing at all_, trying to push it somewhere in the back of his mind but it's hard when his best friend, his best friend who is only a best friend and nothing more (_nothing nothing_) is undressing before him. Gene turns around, involuntarily it seems, and he catches Finny's eye again and something sparks in the air unseen, like a crack of thunder and a tree suddenly on fire from lightning, and the entire forest is ablaze; Gene crosses the sunbeams and flurries and leans down so his face is only centimeters (or is it millimeters?) from Phineas's own and has a hand resting on the bed by one side of Phineas and he looks at him a moment, mouth slightly open, and then Phineas presses himself up so that their lips meet. Gene makes a sound and Finny pulls away; Gene looks at him confusedly and asks, voice high, "And what was _that_?" But Finny decides he doesn't look _bothered_ by it, so he only curves his lips in a sly smile and says, although he realizes it doesn't make much sense, "Summer." And with that he pulls on Gene's arm beckoning the day never to end.

**gene;** Summer, after all. I know we've missed dinner and all, because the bustle outside, but it doesn't seem to matter much. It's getting chilly outside, I can feel the breeze through the window, and Finny's crinkling his toes, I can _see him_. In fact, I can see _all of him_. "We should close the window before it gets too cold," I suggest, and he makes a _hmm_ his answer. Without thinking, I add, "You look nice." His chest quakes like the earth, I can feel it underneath me, and he says, "Well thank you. I could say the same." It's only after he says this that I realize - _oh_, we really did do that, then, didn't we? So I suppose it doesn't matter what I say - but he puts his hand up from my back to my hair and it's getting so late now, it seems -

Gene awakens in the middle of the night and is shivering, but it's too comfortable to move to close the window, so he leans across their legs to pull the bedclothes up and settles back against Phineas. It's summer, after all, and it doesn't last forever.

**II. of spaces and their filling**

He sometimes thinks of it; he thinks of his life before he met Phineas, and realizes it was filled with all sorts of spaces, gaps, enormous chasms and he had to hop awkwardly from precariously standing pillar to precariously standing pillar just to get by. Now, with Phineas; and now, particularly, with Phineas as his - he daren't use the word _lover_, but he supposes that's what they are, is lovers, and he supposes that they're both fairies after all; now, he realizes Finny fills those spaces easily and often overflows them. Gene takes time to label the spaces filled by Phineas: _strange person in your life but you love them anyway_, the first space Finny filled, as Gene realized he had never known anyone stranger (well, Leper maybe), though it brought out a certain positive quality in himself that he supposed filled yet another space, the _myself_ space; _best friend_, as Finny had soon become, and even deemed himself Gene's best friend far before Gene felt that way about the other boy himself; _genuine love_, and that, Gene felt, was easily self-explanatory; and there were other gaps, seemingly unimportant ones, that Phineas filled, though Gene had yet to identify them or to name them, or to see their significance. And anyway, it didn't matter much because as Gene had before been forced to find his way through a maze in life, he now could run wherever he liked, like those couples in sappy romance films.

**III. of a dawn(ing) smile **

One day Phineas tells Gene, with the expression on his face equivalent to that of a dawning revelation as a philosopher might have had, Gene, we should jump from the tree at sun_rise_. It's a paradox-thinger, you see, the sun coming up and we're jumping down, and - _yes_, Finny, I'll go. At the exasperated look on Gene's face Phineas smiles broadly.

It's the morning, the _god-damned morning_ and it's still dark outside (so, he thinks, it's not even really morning yet). It's summer, too, though, so Gene befriends madness; he's never been up so early. They watch the sun rise to an agreeable place in the sky, to a place where Phineas says at last, "Well, let's jump!" Phineas jumps first, then Gene; Gene is exceptionally tired this morning, and as such, the water is exceptionally cold. He surfaces and bites a harsh, "Damn it, Finny, brilliant idea!" And though his sarcasm and angered expression convey one emotion, his term of endearment conveys another. And anyway, when Finny dunks him under, Gene only grabs at whatever clothing the former boy has and attempts its removal. And _that_ is certainly behavior that must be treated, as Finny tells Gene when the boy finally succeeds in removing his swim shorts, and he swims towards him with the most seductive look he can muster on his face. It's enough to make Gene laugh and throw Finny's shorts into the tree.

**IV. of a faultline **

Summer ends in a crunching of bones, the disgusting splat of a body in the water and the breaking of a god into a million pieces. It's the end of the universe, and it's all because of Gene.

**gene;** _my fault god what did I do it's my fault _my _fault_

**V. of cold **

Winter is cold that year, so cold and icy, though Phineas is returned; and wherever Gene goes he thinks he can see his breath. Whether it's outside in the snow or inside kissing Phineas's lips, collarbone, hipbone, and breathing against his skin, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_, a million times over.

**VI. of love despite ice**

**phineas;** I used to love the winter, well, anyway SOMETIMES I did; but why is the ice so fucking slippery when one's on crutches? It's embarrassing to fall - in front of Gene especially. I've already done it so I've broken my leg but why must I keep repeating the process? If madness is the repeating of an event hoping for a different outcome - my body must be _pretty fucking mad_ then **(1)**. Anyway it's really cold here, all the time, except it seems for when Gene is _with me_. I can tell he feels bad for whatever reason but however much it might hurt - _some_times, when he's not paying attention to my leg or what-ever - it feels good. And anyway I know he loves me, I can tell in the way he _says it_, so it doesn't matter.

("Oh, fuck, Phineas, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - " "It's alright, I know" - even as he intakes a breath sharply. Gene's body shudders. "_Fuck_, I love you," kisses on his skin of shaky breath once Gene collapses beside him, and he returns it, "I love you too." Only, Phineas doesn't hear, but when he finally dozes off to sleep Gene says, again and again against his shoulder, _I love you and I'm so sorry_.)

**gene;** sorry for breaking your leg and breaking your heart and hurting you all the time and -

**VII. of a surgery (or, as that is a misnomer, **_**of a disaster**_**) **

**gene;** dead no no _no_. bone marrow and blood stream and what does it all mean? I think it means Phineas and dead but -

He couldn't ever seem to connect the words together in a coherent string of words. He only knew -

**gene;** it's not true, no, Stanpole hadn't even ever mentioned Phineas's name - had we been talking about the same person? No, certainly not, not ever, not him, not _Phineas_.

Phineas was, always in his eyes, the summer and a perfect body, athletic grace and beauty, beauty he saw across rays from heaven; Phineas was never a cold, fragile-as-ice body breaking into a thousand pieces. No; no, that wasn't him.

**VIII. of the letters he finds in a box underneath his bed **

_July 4, 1942 _

_Gene, _

_Hello there buddy. todays america's Independence day - are we really independent? i don't know. you know how i feel about you - hell, if you like you can scratch a word out of that sentence so it reads "you know how i FEEL YOU" (i bet you're blushing right now) but i just wanted to let you know i don't give shit about independence. i know i'm so fucking brilliant (no need to remind me) but it seems i can't live without you lately. without you around and without you...YOU KNOW. so you see i'm rather DEPENDENT on you. har har. anyway I'll see you after sports today I'm putting this letter on your pillow. I know we're not married and whatever but i've seen mydad do it so - he leaves "romantic" flowers for mom sometimes or whatever, so i thought if I gave you a letter you might, who knows, do something REALLY CRAZY like I don't know, profess your love for me in class one day or something. only don't that's rather stupid. __i think i love YOU though._

_sincerely, your __lover__ friend-type person, _

_finny _

_p.s. I wasn't kidding about the doing something crazy part. i wouldn't mind if you tried it __in bed__. _

_January 5, 1943 _

_Gene, _

_it hurts to walk sometimes. it hurts to fall ALL THE TIME. I don't know what to think anymore. of you, of myself... Do you really love me? I think sometimes. i never get the same answer. I just wanted to tell you that i love you. as stupid as it is, and as much as I am a godamned FAIRY... anyway, i'm never letting you see this if i can help it. it's rather too revealing about NEGATIVE THOUGHT. I know I acted all oblivious that time you came to visit - but i knew entirely what you were talking about. I only avoided acknowledging it, thinking of it, etc. If you did hurt me, you didn't mean to, did you? not really. because when you love someone - they really love you back - and you don't hurt them either. i love you, so you must love me back. i wonder also if i'm naive in believing your innocence. i love you, and i believe you didn't mean to - forgiveness is something different though. _

_love, fin. _

**IX. of letters never sent, answered**

He never cries; it's not impossible to, though. It's the sort of numbness and disbelief that renders crying impossible, what he feels. It's not lack of feeling, of emotion. He finds the letters in a box underneath Finny's bed and bites his lip so hard it bleeds as he reads them. A year later, after he feels he's moved on - moved on, yet not forgotten, not forgiven himself for being such an ass, nor Phineas for loving him so; he opens the box of letters again, now hiding in a spot underneath his own bed, and reads them again. He knows Phineas is gone, though he knows not where. To purgatory? to Tartarus? Finny always thought it was funny how there were other Phineases around, and in Tartarus, getting their livers eaten out; he longed to meet this chap and congratulate him on his stupidity - Gene saw him doing that. As for the River Lethe, Gene saw Finny refusing to drink from it, only perhaps pissing into it so Hades spat him back out **(2)**. He gathers a pen and paper to reply to Finny's letters, so that wherever he was, laughing or otherwise, he might hear him;

_Finny, _

_It's been one year since; I before doubted I could ever live without you, without outrageous shenanigans and whatnot; yet here I am. Am I really living, though, in this shithole of a world at war? You would be angry with your country to hear it's STILL going on. I know you SAID you denied it, then you came back and told me you lied. Did you really? I don't know. I love you too, always. "it hurts to fall," you say; and I know. Even as you fell from the tree I fell from grace, as, say, an angel might. I was so ashamed with myself, because I was prideful and afraid to fall behind you in shadows. I needn't have worried about that though; I feel your pain was a waste - it never should have been. Have you ever forgiven me? Did you forgive me, even as you said you did? Or was that a lie to calm my tempestuous mind? _

_But to answer your last question, Finny: Finny, I never meant to. I never meant to hurt you but I always loved you, _

_Gene. _

**X. of the shadow of a tree and its shape **

They never saw, those future generations of Devon - never saw the shadow of the tree, not in the water nor on the ground. The tree held its occupants, animals that scurried away when adolescent boys climbed into it again again and again, and it stood over that river; these boys never saw the shadow of the tree in the shape of a teen-age on crutches, his friend beside him always loving but always ashamed of his - was it a sin? to do something seemingly involuntarily; subconsciously? Gene loved Phineas and Phineas loved Gene and Gene made a mistake and Phineas -

**gene;** I never denied he was dead; I lost my innocence that summer in the first act of disgrace and never denied it. Phineas was dead. I repeated the letter over and over in my mind till I was sure he could believe it, till I was sure I could believe myself;

_Finny, I never meant to. I never meant to hurt you but I always loved you._

--Notes

**(1)** I took this from the song "Try It Again" by the Hives: "They say the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result."

**(2)** Tartarus: the term for the underworld; Hades: the god of the underworld; the River Lethe is the river that each person must drink of for 1000 years to forget your life before being "regenerated" into a new life; Phineas/Phineus - now, I couldn't find it online, but having taken three years of Latin, I'm pretty sure there was a Phineas in mythology whose punishment in the underworld was to have his liver eaten by a vulture every single day. (All of this information was certified true via the internet or otherwise, as in a case where I couldn't find further information, recited from memory - hence, it may be slightly off.)


End file.
